Worldie wrote:Would be interesting to see what lore they can invent to keep the game going for 5+ more expansions though.

Nevertheless, I'll likely keep playing it until they shut it down.

WoW will still be online loooooong after they stop making expansions for it.

Eventually servers will merge and updates will be limited to just balance patches but WoW is going nowhere.

Well, who would be playing? Sure, keeping the servers up is fine, but... what's left to do? Is WoW strong enough for PVP that the PVPers would stay? The raiding community would mostly leave. Even the achievement hunters will be done eventually.

Perhaps the combined mega server will be filled with PVPers and RPers. O.o

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

halabar wrote:Unless Titan isn't a true MMO, then WoW is almost certain to go F2P before Titan, as Blizz releasing a F2P new MMO would surely kill off the subscription one.

Question is, what model are they going to go for with Titan? and what demographics are they going to chase? The market is crowded, so I'm wondering how they are going to try to stand out.

I think they will use WoW as a real world testing ground for F2P models to coincide with the next expansion.

If they do F2P right, 10m people will be playing WoW instead of 5m.

halabar wrote:Well, who would be playing? Sure, keeping the servers up is fine, but... what's left to do? Is WoW strong enough for PVP that the PVPers would stay? The raiding community would mostly leave. Even the achievement hunters will be done eventually.

Perhaps the combined mega server will be filled with PVPers and RPers. O.o

I think that many people will keep WoW installed and just dip in and out. Very few are able to exhaust everything there is to do in WoW and a lot of us have attachment to our main character.

I think you are seriously overvaluing the f2p models business worth. Blizzard is a company first and foremost, and they will choose what is the most profitable way to go about it, and as long as several million people are willing to pay 15$ a month (its not really that much in europe, even on a monthly payment), thats more money than they can probably earn on an f2p model unless they were to give up the "pay 2 win = bad" idea, which I just don't see happen.

They need to make money off WoW to pay for producing Titan, and going F2P with the next expansion seems a lot more like wishful thinking than actual realistic analysis (or even realistic guesses)

Right now its 8.3 million players, it will drop some before next expansion comes around, for sure, and then it will rise when the next expansion hits, like it usually does, but thinking F2P is anywhere in the immediate future is, in my opinion, ludicrous, or pure wishful thinking (if you actually wish for it to go F2P - F2P is the first sign I'm not playing it in general, and I know I'm not the only one that thinks that way).

Also, having 5 million paying customers is still a whole lot more than the nearest competitor, and is a lot better than 10 million freeloaders occasionally paying for something in a microtransaction.

Lieris wrote:I think that many people will keep WoW installed and just dip in and out. Very few are able to exhaust everything there is to do in WoW and a lot of us have attachment to our main character.

Lieris wrote:I think that many people will keep WoW installed and just dip in and out. Very few are able to exhaust everything there is to do in WoW and a lot of us have attachment to our main character.

^- true story

well, and if new content basically doesn't come... there goes all that 'not fun' stuff like pressure to progress. Folks may start having fun again.

not after the 'raid or die' folks leave (talkin 10/20/whatever years from now, just before the servers go dark...), and you can't tell me with a straight face that there isn't more to do in the game than there was in DS and the ICC days.

Nooska wrote:I think you are seriously overvaluing the f2p models business worth. Blizzard is a company first and foremost, and they will choose what is the most profitable way to go about it, and as long as several million people are willing to pay 15$ a month (its not really that much in europe, even on a monthly payment), thats more money than they can probably earn on an f2p model unless they were to give up the "pay 2 win = bad" idea, which I just don't see happen.

They don't have several million people paying $15 a month anymore. A huge chunk of the "subs" come from Asia.

They need to make money off WoW to pay for producing Titan, and going F2P with the next expansion seems a lot more like wishful thinking than actual realistic analysis (or even realistic guesses)

Blizzard saying that Titan won't be subscription based is a tacit admission that this model no longer works.

Right now its 8.3 million players,

7.7m.

it will drop some before next expansion comes around, for sure, and then it will rise when the next expansion hits, like it usually does,

The same happened with MOP but the rise was merely a blip. It did not make up for the subs lost during Cata nor did it stop the rot.

but thinking F2P is anywhere in the immediate future is, in my opinion, ludicrous, or pure wishful thinking (if you actually wish for it to go F2P - F2P is the first sign I'm not playing it in general, and I know I'm not the only one that thinks that way).

If I was running the company it's exactly what I would be preparing for.

Also, having 5 million paying customers is still a whole lot more than the nearest competitor, and is a lot better than 10 million freeloaders occasionally paying for something in a microtransaction.

WoW's competition isn't other MMOs anymore. LOL has been eating WoW's lunch for some time now and Bungie's new COOP loot FPS Destiny will further eat into WoW's player base. Blizzard will not sit on their hands and let the game lose 2m subs a year and only react when the game starts making a loss, I again assure you that they have too much pride to let that happen (and Kotick won't let it happen anyway) and they're too smart to stubbornly watch their baby bleed out because the pricing model of 8 years ago doesn't work anymore. I am very confident that they have alternative models planned out already.

In regard to a huge number of the subscribvers being from asia, how many of the people lost have been from asia as well?

The thing is, "the model doesn't work anymore" is a premise I disagree with. The loss of subscription isn't due to the model not working or increased competition from F2P, its simple attrition of the original userbase, and the one that came after. 7.7 million subs is not a red flag in any way, and I would be very weirded out if Blizzard thought so.

They need the "steady income" to fund their future developments, so subscription isn't going out with neither next expansion or anytime thereafter. Also, unless Titan is a completely different type of game, WoW will likely be shut down about the time Titan shows up.

The draw with F2P is removing that initial barrier of having to pay for the game and a subscription in order to play. It brings in a wide number of people cause there is nothin for them to lose in tryin the game and the company hopes that most of them stick around and then a portion of those end up spending money. The games that switch to F2P do so cause they know there is a substantial number of potential players out there and if even a fraction of them stay and pay it is likely more money then they would get from their currently small subscription base.

However with how old and popular WoW is there are likely not a great many people left who have not given WoW a shot. So instead of bringin in a swarm of new people they would only get a small crowd. The amount of money that would bring in would likely not be nearly as much as they would lose from all the people that currently play that would stop paying. Also swappin to F2P would likely not draw too much of the old player base back as I doubt money was ever the issue for them quitting.

One could argue whether or not F2P is the way for the future or not, but with WoW's age I do not think we will see it go F2P anytime in the near future.

I wonder if in the MMO genre (has the subscription model ever really been tried in other genres?), that the subscription is dead because WoW essentially has it on lockdown, or if it is simply no longer a viable model at all?

Fridmarr wrote:I wonder if in the MMO genre (has the subscription model ever really been tried in other genres?), that the subscription is dead because WoW essentially has it on lockdown, or if it is simply no longer a viable model at all?

I think it's both. During Classic/TBC/WOTLK absolutely had it on lockdown because the other MMOs were lacklustre and nobody was doing the F2P thing right; F2P was considered garbage or throwaway and millions of people were okay with paying for a premium experience. That's no longer the case as LOL is massive and even Valve are trying out F2P with Team Fortress 2. COD has a subscription service but it's only optional. I think that folk are used to the idea of F2P now and it no longer has the stigma it once had.

I think at this point what premium subscription services and in-game purchases WoW could offer is a more interesting discussion than whether or not they go F2P (something I view as inevitable if the game continues to decline).

Oh I agree that it's likely inevitable at some point, that seems to be the pattern, though it may not be for some time yet. And yes, it would be an interesting discussion on how WoW could monetize the game in a F2P model. I was just curious if the thought was that there really won't be subscription based games anymore, or with WoW out of the picture (or not nearly as popular as it is even now) if there is room for that model to still be successful.

One of the biggest difference (imo) between F2p and sub in the past is that F2p tended to attract mostly kids and immature people who couldnt afford the sub, while sub was played mostly by "mature" people.

This is no longer the case though as I often find people under 18 playing WoW (which is tecnically forbidden afaik)

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Worldie wrote:One of the biggest difference (imo) between F2p and sub in the past is that F2p tended to attract mostly kids and immature people who couldnt afford the sub, while sub was played mostly by "mature" people.

This is no longer the case though as I often find people under 18 playing WoW (which is tecnically forbidden afaik)

Wow is rated teen afaik so you are allowed to play it from 12+ , we don't take members <18 anyway and the average age in our guild is probably somewhere around 28-30 so i don't get much in contact with younger ppl ... on the other side i wouldn't call our rooster "mature" without smiling

But then, maybe it was also because you weren't expecting other random people met in /4 to be heroic raiders back then.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Also back then there was social accountability to your actions - today, most people can get their kicks from non-accountable possibilities like LFR and LFD if they get too bad a rep, or they can just servertransfer.

Fridmarr wrote:Oh I agree that it's likely inevitable at some point, that seems to be the pattern, though it may not be for some time yet. And yes, it would be an interesting discussion on how WoW could monetize the game in a F2P model. I was just curious if the thought was that there really won't be subscription based games anymore, or with WoW out of the picture (or not nearly as popular as it is even now) if there is room for that model to still be successful.

I think that Bungie (Destiny) and Blizzard (Titan) not using a mandatory subscription for their new games is a sign that it has very much run its course for this gaming generation. If they don't feel that they can fill the vacuum WoW leaves behind then probably nobody can.

Worldie wrote:This is no longer the case though as I often find people under 18 playing WoW (which is tecnically forbidden afaik)

The game has a 13 age restriction here (we get the EU version).

Semi-related: I've got quite a large age-group spread in my 10-man group -- the youngest is 16, the oldest 58.

I think in the US all that is required legally is that the 'use by minors' clause is satisfied. The ESRB rating of teen states it is suitable for 13+ while I believe the subscription technically requires an 18+ person to OK it.